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CHINA.

but from missionary reports, as well as the accounts published in the • Peking Gazette,' it would appear that there are almost constant deficits, which the governors and high officers of provinces must make good by loans or extraordinary taxation.

The public revenue is mainly derived from three sources, namely, customs duties, licenses, and a tax upon land. The customs duties fall more upon exports than imports ; their total produce at the thirteen treaty ports open to Europeans amounted to 8, 69 1,81 7 taels,or 2,897,272/., in 1863, and to 9,425,656 taels, or 3,141,885*., in 1868. To the amount collected in 1868 the foreign trade contributed 8,002,751 taels, or 2,667,584/., while the portion paid by Great Britain and British colonies in the same year was 6,706,365 taels, or 2,235.455/., or above 83 per cent. Besides this sum, the British trade paid transit duties to the amount of 1,117,727/. in 1868, so that the total contribution of the same to the Imperial Exchequer was 3,353,782/.

The population of China is very dense, but nothing accurate is known respecting the number of inhabitants, although official enumerations of the same are stated to have taken place at intervals since the year 703, or for more than eleven centuries. One of the causes of uncertainty regarding the population of the empire is that its limits are undefined, the imperial government claiming the allegiance of the inhabitants of many of the neighbouring territories, which appear to be more or less independent. According to the most reliable estimates, together with Chinese official returns, the area of the empire and its dependencies, real and asserted, may be set down, in round numbers, at about 200,000 geogr. square miles, with a population of* nearly 390 millions, distributed as follows: —

Area

Population

geog. sq. miles

China proper

• 60,857

367,633,000

Dependencies: —

Mandehuria

18,000

3,000,000

3Iongolia.

61,000

3,000,1100

Thibet ....

30,600

6,000,000

Corea ....

4,100

8,000.000

Lienkhieu Islands.

110

500,000

Other dependencies. Total

25,000

1,500,000

199,667

389,633,000

China proper, extending over 60,857 geographical, or 1,297,999 English square miles, is divided into eighteen provinces, the area and population of which are given as follows in the imperial census of 1812:—